The Freak Observer Read Free Page B

the morning, I guess, and everything else about school would have just stayed the same—except I don’t know when I would have done my homework. Could I do calculus between emptying bedpans and tucking in sheets?
    And maybe Esther would still be alive.
    Because changing one thing, changes everything.
    The chickens are getting calmer and are sideling closer to the scraps again. They have forgiven my mom for moving fast, but she hasn’t forgiven me for being in the wrong place at the wrong time. I was undependable when she needed me to be dependable. I was sitting on a tailgate waiting to get drunk when I should have been ready to step into doughy white clogs and take up a bigger share of the load.
    She still isn’t looking at me.
    But I’m looking at her. I can see the scar by the corner of her eye. She got it when she was learning to walk. She fell against a sharp corner on a coffee table. She made sure there were no sharp corners when I was little. When I was little, she used to call that scar her eye makeup. She used to say that when I was little. When I was little and she was happy.
    â€œGet the eggs,” Mom says, and she heads for the house.
    . . .
    There are seven eggs this morning. Most are already cold, but one is still warm from being inside the chicken-machine that turns carrot ends and earwigs into perfect shells and gobs of yellow yolk.
    Eggs are beautiful. Their shape is ideal. The story about eggs is about how fragile they are, but they aren’t, not always. It depends on how the pressure is applied. If you fling an egg out into the world like you’re in the outfield and it’s the ball, sometimes it bounces when it hits the ground. I have seen eggs bounce. Of course, I’ve seen eggs splatter too. That happens a lot more often.
    Whenever they talk about the arrow of time, they use the example of an egg. “You can’t unscramble an egg. Time flows in only one direction.”
    On a good day, I would try to understand the beauty of eggs and the puzzle of time. But it is not a good day.
    My brain is itching.
    . . .
    I need to go to school. I cook eggs. I eat the eggs. I get dressed. I walk to the bus stop.
    The moon is full, and it’s still up. It’s a nickel in the western sky, round and shiny and not worth much. The snow catches the moonlight and tosses it around until the world is three colors: black, shadow, and snow light.
    Trudge, trudge, trudge. Just keep walking down the wheel ruts between the snow. It isn’t far to the bus stop.
    What is this? It looks like a little felt slipper. It is. It is a little felt slipper. It is Asta’s slipper. How could she have lost her slipper? Where is she? Her foot will be cold without her slipper.
    I want to call her, but I know she can’t answer. She forgot how to answer. How can she be lost here in the snow? Tracks, there must be tracks. There are always tracks in the snow.
    . . .
    The moon is really there, but it isn’t full, and there is no snow. And there will be no slipper, because there is no Asta.
    Asta is gone.
    I know how to fight dreams, but I’m not sure I’m winning. This time I woke up before The Bony Guy broke my heart. He didn’t get to hold out his web of bony fingers and show me that he had Asta’s other slipper. He didn’t make me scream in my sleep and wake up crying.
    I’m awake, and I am not crying. I’m going to call it a win.



I thought maybe Dad and Little Harold would be around today. It’s Sunday—even gyppos don’t work on Sunday. They would have been a welcome distraction, even though Dad still isn’t speaking to me directly, and I try to keep my distance from Little Harold when I’m bug-ass nuts. I mean, he’s not even nine yet. He’s entitled to some protection.
    Maybe that’s what Dad was thinking when he loaded the little guy into the truck this morning and left. Whatever the plan, I wasn’t in on it.
    . .